I had been working for the same company for approximately seven years. It was always a bit of a boy’s club and I had to work hard to prove myself and move up the ranks. Working in information technology, there is always fresh blood coming through and this tends to make everyone competitive and insecure about their positions. A few years ago I was the hottest thing around. The male bosses liked me, I was fairly young and attractive and aside from that, I had great ideas and got a lot of attention. I was thriving.
Four years later I found myself in a management position and the pressure began to build. I became more of a target for the new starters who thought they could do my job better than I could. I must admit I thought the same of my boss when I first got out of uni. I was in a precarious position. I had a certain level of authority but I wasn’t an untouchable senior manager with the big pay packet whom everyone respected. I was pushing to join that club for years but still had not managed to get in. They kept telling me to be patient and that my time would come, but time and time again new people joined the senior management team with less experience, demanding more money than someone like me who did a great job and had shown the company my loyalty. I bit my tongue, I helped everyone where I could and even did their jobs when they were too incompetent to do it themselves. I thought if I could show them what I could do, they would push my promotion when the time came. I was wrong.
It became pretty clear that things weren’t going to change anytime soon. I began to struggle financially. I was never very good at budgeting but now the situation was getting out of control. I was shopping to make myself happy and digging myself into an even deeper hole by making it harder for me to take a smaller salary package somewhere else where I might have been happier.
They say if you avoid making a decision for so long eventually it would be made for you and that’s what happened to me.
I heard through the grapevine that the company was going to go through a round of redundancies. I pulled every string I could to get myself out with a redundancy package. The pay-out would just be enough to pay out my debts and leave me some breathing room. It didn’t work. None of the managers came through for me. I thought they would be happy to sacrifice me to make themselves more secure but nobody would so much as agree to take it up with anyone else.
As the list became finalised I was growing increasingly desperate. I asked the notorious womaniser of a CEO out on a date. I knew he had been interested in me for years but the feeling was never mutual and if half of the stories from his P.A. were true, he was sleeping with half the women in the city. He was also married and having been cheated on in the past, I was throwing my ethics out the window to play this final card.
I took him out to dinner, during which I told him that I wanted to travel and that I had really grown professionally during my time with the company but that I thought it was time for me to go. He responded with the usual promise of my much sought after promotion being only 12 to 24 months away and that I should be more patient. I turned on the charm and pushed him into telling me who was going to be asked to leave during this round of redundancies. He looked me straight in the eye and told me that he would never let me go — as far as he was concerned I was his most dedicated worker and he would no sooner cut off his own arm than offer me a redundancy.
I took him back to my apartment and seduced him. It was a passionate night and we both looked a little worst for wear at work the next day.
A few weeks later I told him that he had given me a STD. He was shocked but didn’t deny it. I knew he had recently had one, courtesy of his PA, but I had been careful when I slept with him — although of course, it was the last thing on his mind. He was apologetic and offered to pay all my expenses and give me a week off on the company to make sure I was feeling better. I told him that was not going to do and if I did not get a redundancy package I would take the matter further.
A week later I got what I wanted. It was definitely not my finest hour. At the end I had to act like a man to get them to let me leave the club I was never fully a part of.
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